If you’re using Snow Leopard, follow these steps: In Snow Leopard, the instructions are the same as Leopard except that Directory Utility has moved to System Library CoreServices. If the root account is already enabled, don’t worry; you can change the password by using Option 2 in Terminal, which is on the next page. Terminator is an open source terminal app built with a focus on arranging terminals in grids. Its behaviour is mostly based on the GNOME Terminal with extra features for regular CLI users and sysadmins e.g. Simultaneous typing in arbitrary groups of terminals, tons of keyboard shortcuts, etc. And it is free to use.

For anyone who knows me, I hate Mac’s, and anything made by Apple. In fact, I’ve never purchased any product from Apple, ever! I also hate using them, but sometimes you are forced to.

Today, I was given an iMac where the Administrator account was somehow deleted. Therefore, without the Administrator account, you can’t install applications for users and do a whole bunch of other things.

I was tasked two perform a factory reset and get the iMac working again. However, in the process, I learnt how easy it is to access files on the computer without having access to any passwords – even if the computer is password protected. This is also a great tutorial if you need to reset your Mac’s password.

Hacking an iMac – Creating an Administrator Account

Step one in the process is to create a new Administrator account. This is fairly easy to do. Just shutdown the computer, and when turning it on, hold the command key and hold “s”.

This opens your iMac in an environment called “Single User Mode”. Once you have booted into it, type: /sbin/mount -uw /

This will mount your startup drive, so you can access system files and folders.

Now type: rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Then type the following to restart your computer: reboot

This command removes a file which tells the Mac on startup that it needs to run the “First Setup”. Once your Mac has booted, you will be promoted to create the new Administrator account – just as your Mac’s brand new!

Hacking an iMac – Accessing Files

Now, you can log into your iMac newly created Administrator account. However, if you browse to the “User’s” folder, you may notice you can’t access any files.

Another simple fix…

• Right Click on the User’s folder, and select “Get Info”
• Expand Sharing & Permissions
• Add your user account and give it the permission of “Read / Write”
• Click on the settings cog dropdown and click “Apply to enclosed items…”

This will give you Read / Write permission to all files in the user’s directory.

Doing this, probably took me no more than 10 minutes and I got access so everything on the Mac. I would then also be able to reset the user’s password to log into there account, in which I could access Google Chrome’s password manager, and even the Keychain to access other passwords for emails and Facebook etc.

I have a huge list of the reasons why I don’t like Mac’s, and this is just one of the two reasons I added to my list today. The second one was how you charge a Mac’s mice – You can’t use it while you charge it… WTF? And here I thought Apple focuses on usability…

Sorry boss, I can’t do any work as my mouse is flat and I can’t charge it and use it at the same time, nor replace the batteries…

Performing the factory reset

For those also wanting to know how to factory reset your Mac, it’s as simple as holding the Command and “R” key this time during startup. You can then enter the Disk Utility in which you can “Erase” your hard drive, and then click the “Reinstall macOS”.

More information can be found here: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201314

The Terminal app allows you to control your Mac using a command prompt. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps because you’re used to working on a command line in a Unix-based system and prefer to work that way. Terminal is a Mac command line interface. There are several advantages to using Terminal to accomplish some tasks — it’s usually quicker, for example. In order to use it, however, you’ll need to get to grips with its basic commands and functions. Once you’ve done that, you can dig deeper and learn more commands and use your Mac’s command prompt for more complex, as well as some fun, tasks.

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How to open Terminal on Mac

The Terminal app is in the Utilities folder in Applications. To open it, either open your Applications folder, then open Utilities and double-click on Terminal, or press Command - spacebar to launch Spotlight and type 'Terminal,' then double-click the search result.

You’ll see a small window with a white background open on your desktop. In the title bar are your username, the word 'bash' and the dimensions of the window in pixels. Bash stands for 'Bourne again shell'. There are a number of different shells that can run Unix commands, and on the Mac Bash is the one used by Terminal.

If you want to make the window bigger, click on the bottom right corner and drag it outwards. If you don’t like the black text on a white background, go to the Shell menu, choose New Window and select from the options in the list.

If Terminal feels complicated or you have issues with the set-up, let us tell you right away that there are alternatives. MacPilot allows to get access to over 1,200 macOS features without memorizing any commands. Basically, a third-party Terminal for Mac that acts like Finder.

For Mac monitoring features, try iStat Menus. The app collects data like CPU load, disk activity, network usage, and more — all of which accessible from your menu bar.

Basic Mac commands in Terminal

The quickest way to get to know Terminal and understand how it works is to start using it. But before we do that, it’s worth spending a little time getting to know how commands work. To run a command, you just type it at the cursor and hit Return to execute.

Every command is made up of three elements: the command itself, an argument which tells the command what resource it should operate on, and an option that modifies the output. So, for example, to move a file from one folder to another on your Mac, you’d use the move command 'mv' and then type the location of the file you want to move, including the file name and the location where you want to move it to.

Let’s try it.

1. Type cd ~/Documentsthen and press Return to navigate to your Home folder.

2. Type lsthen Return (you type Return after every command).

You should now see a list of all the files in your Documents folder — ls is the command for listing files.

To see a list of all the commands available in Terminal, hold down the Escape key and then press y when you see a question asking if you want to see all the possibilities. To see more commands, press Return.

Unix has its own built-in manual. So, to learn more about a command type man [name of command], where 'command' is the name of the command you want find out more about.

Terminal rules

There are a few things you need to bear in mind when you’re typing commands in Terminal, or any other command-line tool. Firstly, every character matters, including spaces. So when you’re copying a command you see here, make sure you include the spaces and that characters are in the correct case.

You can’t use a mouse or trackpad in Terminal, but you can navigate using the arrow keys. If you want to re-run a command, tap the up arrow key until you reach it, then press Return. To interrupt a command that’s already running, type Control-C.

Commands are always executed in the current location. So, if you don’t specify a location in the command, it will run wherever you last moved to or where the last command was run. Use the cdcommand, followed by a directory path, like in Step 1 above, to specify the folder where you want a command to run.

There is another way to specify a location: go to the Finder, navigate to the file or folder you want and drag it onto the Terminal window, with the cursor at the point where you would have typed the path.

Here’s another example. This time, we’ll create a new folder inside your Documents directory and call it 'TerminalTest.'

1. Open a Finder window and navigate to your Documents folder.

2. Type cd and drag the Documents folder onto the Terminal window.

3. Now, type mkdir 'TerminalTest'

Go back to the Finder, open Text Edit and create a new file called 'TerminalTestFile.rtf'. Now save it to the TerminalTest folder in your Documents folder.

In the Terminal window, type cd ~/Documents/TerminalTest then Return. Now type lsand you should see 'TerminalTestFile' listed.

To change the name of the file, type this, pressing Return after every step:

1. cd~/Documents/Terminal Test

2. mv TerminalTestFile TerminalTestFile2.rtf

That will change the name of the file to 'TerminalTestFile2'. You can, of course, use any name you like. The mv command means 'move' and you can also use it to move files from one directory to another. In that case, you’d keep the file names the same, but specify another directory before typing the the second instance of the name, like this:

mv ~/Documents/TerminalTest TerminalTestFile.rtf ~/Documents/TerminalTest2 TerminalTestFile.rtf

How To Use The Mac Terminal For Hacking Devices

More advanced Terminal commands

Terminal can be used for all sorts of different tasks. Some of them can be performed in the Finder, but are quicker in Terminal. Others access deep-rooted parts of macOS that aren’t accessible from the Finder without specialist applications. Here are a few examples.

Copy files from one folder to another

1. In a Terminal window, type ditto [folder 1] [folder 1] where 'folder 1' is the folder that hosts the files and 'folder 2' is the folder you want to move them to.

2. To see the files being copied in the Terminal window, type -v after the command.

Download files from the internet

You’ll need the URL of the file you want to download in order to use Terminal for this.

1. cd ~/Downloads/

2. curl -O [URL of file you want to download]

If you want to download the file to a directory other than your Downloads folder, replace ~/Downloads/ with the path to that folder, or drag it onto the Terminal window after you type the cd command.

Change the default location for screenshots

If you don’t want macOS to save screenshots to your Desktop when you press Command-Shift-3, you can change the default location in Terminal

1. defaults write com.apple.screencapture location [path to folder where you want screenshots to be saved]

2. Hit Return

3. killall SystemUIServer

4. Hit Return

How To Use The Mac Terminal For Hacking Device

Change the default file type for screenshots

By default, macOS saves screenshots as .png files. To change that to .jpg, do this:

1. defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG

2. Press Return

3. killall SystemUIServer

4. Press Return

Delete all files in a folder

The command used to delete, or remove, files in Terminal is rm. So, for example, if you wanted to remove a file in your Documents folder named 'oldfile.rtf' you’d use cd ~/Documents to go to your Documents folder then to delete the file. As it stands, that will delete the file without further intervention from you. If you want to confirm the file to be deleted, use -i as in rm -i oldfile.rtf

To delete all the files and sub-folders in a directory named 'oldfolder', the command is rm -R oldfolder and to confirm each file should be deleted, rm -iR oldfolder

Just because you can use Terminal to delete files on your Mac, doesn’t mean you should. It’s a relatively blunt instrument, deleting only those files and folders you specify.

Another way to free up space

If your goal in removing files or folders is to free up space on your Mac, or to remove junk files that are causing your Mac to run slowly, it’s far better to use an app designed for the purpose. CleanMyMac X is one such app.

It will scan your Mac for files and recommend which ones you can delete safely, as well as telling you how much space you’ll save. And once you’ve decided which files to delete, you can get rid of them in a click. You can download CleanMyMac here.

How To Use The Mac Terminal For Hacking Simulator

As you can see, while Terminal may look scary and seem like it’s difficult to use, it really isn’t. The key is learning a few commands, such as those we’ve outlined above, and getting to know the syntax for those commands.

How To Use The Mac Terminal For Hacking Attacks

However, you should be careful when using Terminal, it’s a powerful tool that has deep access to your Mac’s system files. Check commands by googling them if you’re not sure what they do. And if you need to delete files to save space, use an app like CleanMyMac X to do it. It’s much safer!

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